Sources for Blue Rings

[monty]

Monty, you are preaching to the choir with me. I don't agree with any live take of octopus from the wild for the aquarium trade. Yes, I am going to get into trouble again for saying that.
Someone wants to try to breed blue rings? Fine by me. The rough cost projection for trying to breed digueti came out at around 3,000 bucks per year. Way more than I am willing to cough up.

Starving artist. Me.

Well, yeah, that's why I started my first response with "While I agree with you," I just wanted to wax verbose a bit on more detail... and I was a bit afraid that some readers might interpret your post as "eh, blue rings never bite, so no precautions are required" even though I'm pretty sure you didn't mean it that way... it was supposed to be a clarification, although in typical form I sort of wandered off on a tangent.

Speaking of the tangent, it's sort of weird how people will get attached to ideas and deny all sense of probabilities... I should start responding to people who say "this *could* be a winning lottery ticket" with "I'll bet you $20 it's not." It's not as if I'm immune to this sort of thinking, either, of course, but it's disturbing that a lot of people don't see it as problematic.

 

[cthulhu77]

I see the same attitude in the venomous serpent keepers. Me? I am so paranoid when dealing with any animal that has the potential to kill me it isn't funny. Probably why I still have all of my fingers and limbs, and limited scarring (mostly from girls).

Keeping a blue ring octopus requires a lot of safety protocols. They should be kept in a locked room, with a locking lid. I used a variety of stick sponges and scrub pads for cleaning, my hand never entered the water. I wish they made magnet cleaners that were octo safe! I also never tried to get them so scared that they would flash the blue rings. Never had a problem.

 

[Keith]

i'm desperately tryin to convince my brother to not get a blue ring. he's got 2 children, and they're way too crafty for there own good. what are the chances of dying from a blue ring anyways?

 

[cthulhu77]

Oh, somewhere in the 100% range...

No one should keep venomous animals with children in the house, it is completely nuts to even think about it.

 

[monty]

i'm desperately tryin to convince my brother to not get a blue ring. he's got 2 children, and they're way too crafty for there own good. what are the chances of dying from a blue ring anyways?

This article by Roy Caldwell (there's a problem on the site that doesn't show authors for some reason) is a pretty good perspective:

Death in a Pretty Package: The Blue-Ringed Octopuses - The Cephalopod Page

Essentially, a bite that injects even a tiny amount of venom will cause complete numbness and muscular paralysis, except for the heart, within minutes, maybe seconds. This means the person bitten won't be breathing, and can't move to call 9-1-1 or call for help or anything... and this can be from a small enough bite that the victim doesn't even notice s/he's been bitten until the symptoms are setting in. If this happens, the only chance for survival is to give rescue breathing (the lung part of CPR) until an ambulance takes the victim to a hospital, where they'll be on a respirator for several days. The only good news is that if this is done, the toxin can be flushed out of the system over a few days, so as long as the "not breathing" problem isn't fatal over that time, and didn't cause brain damage from lack of oxygen before getting to a hospital, it's possible to have a full recovery. The only other mitigating factor is that they don't seem as aggressive as some species about actively biting... but any octo can and will bite, and like any animal, may do it completely unpredictably and suddenly.

My personal view is that, while these octos "look flashy," they're also less interesting visually than most are... they only have two looks, "boring" and "warning," while most octos have a huge repertoire of interesting, expressive looks: see the "many looks of Biddle" and the "Kalypso" threads for great pics and videos of some very expressive octos.

 

[Thales]

While I disagree with cthulhu77 that chances for dying from a blue ring are 100% (if that were the case there would be a ton of dead ceph keepers including cthulhu77), IMO a blue ring has no business anywhere around children. What are the chances? Similar to having a dead kid from not bothering to use a car seat or seat belt. Both are risks simply not worth taking.

From 3 posts up:

Keeping a blue ring octopus requires a lot of safety protocols. They should be kept in a locked room, with a locking lid. I used a variety of stick sponges and scrub pads for cleaning, my hand never entered the water.

The are not simple animals to keep.

 

[cthulhu77]

I was perhaps, over the edge, I agree. I have never been bitten by a blue ring, just by bimacs and digueti's.
Nonetheless, to have a deadly animal in the house with children is just ludicrous.
Blue rings can kill people, or at least damage them severely...

 

[L8 2 RISE]

I'm going to chime in real quick here, while the chances of being bitten are not necessarily high, the chances of dieing if you are bitten is about 100% if I remember right, the numbers are, 5 minutes untill the area (probably arm) bitten is paralized, 20 minutes untill completely paralized, 40 minutes untill unconcious, 2-5 hours untill dead. And even if you made it to the hospital, who knows what they could do....

these numbers might be completely off, don't make a fool of me if I'm wrong . I read these from an article on another thread a while back.

 

[Thales]

I was perhaps, over the edge, I agree. I have never been bitten by a blue ring, just by bimacs and digueti's.
Nonetheless, to have a deadly animal in the house with children is just ludicrous.
Blue rings can kill people, or at least damage them severely...

Absolutely!

 

[monty]

making absolute statements like "100%" is not really accurate, but I think it's fair to say that if someone is bitten, there is a very high risk of fatality. It's possible the envenomation would be partial, or in some connective tissue where it doesn't get into the bloodstream too fast, or whatever. And it's certainly accurate to say that they don't bite often, so it's an infrequent event that's high-risk for being lethal, just like Thales said: the chance of getting into a car accident on the day you don't have your kid wear a seatbelt is low, but the chance that the kid will die as a result is high (and I'd argue higher for a blue-ring bite).

I'm not sure that the speed of numbness and such is particularly well studied, and probably depends a lot on where the bite is and how much venom was injected, since it's really a question of how quickly it gets into the bloodstream.

The underlying mechanism is that the TTX in the venom binds very rapidly with high affinity to the sodium channels that allow neurons to work, and it sticks there for a few days. If you have a nerve in a dish and add TTX, its sodium channels will stop working in less than a second. For humans, we have a blood-brain barrier that can block TTX, so it doesn't shut down the neurons in the brain and spinal cord, just the ones that run between muscles and sensory systems and the brain, but that's enough to cause numbness and paralysis (including respiratory.) Only a very small amount of TTX is needed to shutdown each neuron very effectively, and the circulatory system is very good at making sure that all neurons get oxygen and glucose very rapidly, so it's also very good at making sure that the toxin is spread to every neuron within minutes, maybe seconds, once it's in the bloodstream in sufficient quantity. If the octo bites near a large vein, that could be seconds, but if it bites somewhere with relatively low circulation, it might take longer, and might even get in the bloodstream slowly enough that it only causes partial paralysis or maybe no symptoms at all. That's not a bet I'd want to take, though: if I'm ever bitten by a blue-ring, I fully intend to call 9-1-1 and find someone who knows CPR even if I'm not showing any symptoms... but I'm also not planning to deliberately put myself in a situation where I could be bitten anyway.

 

[cthulhu77]

Jeez. Make someone an associate webmaster and instantly they know everything !
Oh yeah, he is completely correct. Shoot, there goes my theory.

 

[monty]

 

[Keith]

yea. i think when i show him this it'll convince him. hopefully. his view is that since he's keeping the tank escape proof and the hood secured down, the kids shouldnt be able to get into it. i dont agree, those kids are insane.

 

[esquid]

why would kids try to open a "childproof" challenge with a squishy brightly colored living prize inside?

 

[Keith]

i swear these kids are demonic. if they can get into something, they will.